Two Traders Talk Prop Firm Trading, Mindset and Lifestyle
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#592: Two Traders Talk Prop Firm Trading, Mindset and Lifestyle
00:25 – Andrew Mitchem and Rimantas Petrauskas talk trading.
01:05 – Rimantas’s background and how he got into trading and coding.
05:12 – Andrew’s background and how he started trading.
06:50 – How Rimantas discovered trading.
14:15 – Andrew’s style of trading.
20:40 – Breakthroughs for Rimantas.
29:39 – The dangers of algorithm trading.
36:12 – Controlling your emotions.
43:45 – Prop firm trading.
51:49 – How much do you really want to be a good trader?
58:39 – Andrew’s and Rimantas lifestyle outside of trading.
01:05:20 – Controlling your risk as a trader.
01:10:05 – Summary and contacting Rimantas https://www.mt4copier.com/
Hi everybody. It’s Andrew Mitchem here at the Forex Trading Coach. I’m, really pleased to be joined today by Rimantas Petrauskas, who’s over in Lithuania. Rimantas lovely to see you. Nice. Nice to be there. Thanks Andrew for having me here. Awesome! Look, I think we’ll be really cool if we can give everybody the next half an hour or so, depending on how long we spend.
Andrew Mitchem and Rimantas Petrauskas talk trading
Just talking a little bit about us, how we got into trading difficulties are trading, breakthrough secrets. That we found, you know, things that we’re looking at doing into the future. Some pitfalls that people may have, you know, the common issues that people fall into. And then to show everybody a little bit about us as people and what we do with, you know, friends, family, hobbies, etc. would be really cool.
If we can do that because, I think we’ve both got a very similar kind of story, different different topics and different hobbies, but kind of similar in a way on different sides of the planet.
Rimantas’s background and how he got into trading and coding.
So, yeah. Tell us about yourself. Where are you based? And, and you know, family background, etc.. Yeah. So I just mute the phone. It’s just buzzing there. So I am from Lithuania. Yes. A small country in Europe. A lot of people don’t even heard about it. Like when I travel to US or somewhere, somewhere further from from Europe.
A lot of people though, you know, like, where is it? You know, and I’m like, oh, it’s next to Poland, this small country, you know. So we have to do some background story about Lithuania. So yeah, I’m born and raised here all my life. I love living there. Lifestyle, taxes low, you know, all that stuff. And you can pretty much travel anywhere you want, especially with the freedom that you are on business.
And, and trading can give you. Yeah. So that’s what I love about it. And, yeah, my story began, I would always say 15, 16 years ago, you know, you know the saying, well, there’s this, famous saying, they say, you get you get you get two lives, like the first one when you’re born and the second one when you realize that there is not, you know, the time is not unlimited.
Yeah. So that’s when you start living. So I remember in like 2009, I went through a lot of transformations. I lost 30kg. I started exercising and started eating healthy. Started learning, you know, developing myself basically got into self-development, reading a lot of books, courses, starting flying to seminars, all that stuff, basically. So there’s been going on ever since, you know.
So I always improve myself year after year after year. So I created my own business, got into trading, and it just never stops, you know, and I believe that it’s one of the most important things for everybody. It’s like, especially those who who feel stuck, you know, those people who feel stuck. There is a reason why you’re stuck.
And the only way to get unstuck and move forward is to get yourself better. Every day. There is this, Japanese thing called Kaizen. It’s like getting better every day by just one step, one person. Right? You know, one thing a day. Yeah. One thing. And and we’ll we’ll have the same 24 hours, which, you know, eight of those eight of those will go to sleeping and other things.
And your work and like, you know, but everybody of us can find one or a few hours a day that you can work on yourself or your dream or whatever the that’s, you know, or getting unstuck. So I remember when I started doing that, I just couldn’t stop, you know? So so now whatever a new day comes, I know I have a limited amount of hours basically, so I always want to improve myself in one year or another, you know?
So that’s pretty much what’s been going on. And I love seeing in the past years and looking how much I’ve improved, comparing myself to who I was before, you know, it’s like you’re not trying to compare yourself with others because you are on your own path, on your own pace, improving, you know, so that’s an important part. Yeah.
Yeah. So my life lately is like work, travel and trying to enjoy life because that’s all we we need. Yeah. Thank you. Right. Enjoy it. That’s what we’re here for. Yes.
Andrew’s background and how he started trading.
And that’s that’s fascinating. If I compare what you’ve just said to me on a slightly different timescale, but sort of similar, you know, New Zealand’s the same way we say to people, you know, other parts of, in other parts of the world, I’m from New Zealand.
And they go, oh, that’s nice. Does that, you know, near Australia or is that in Australia? And I go, no, it’s like a, it’s a three and a half, four hour flight away. It’s a long, long way away. But people think we’re Australia. And the same thing, you know, we’re 5 million people. I think you’re about 2.5 million people.
You know, we’re both very small but very nice places. And, it’s quite interesting that we both have a similar kind of, you know, love of our countries. But also we find that when we go overseas, almost nobody knows about our countries. Yeah, we find that, I got into I used to be dairy farming. I suspect you probably might have known that.
And, I got into trading through getting divorced. You know, and it was. I had a young son at the time who’s about three, and it’s like, what am I going to do? So I started doing the same as you. I went to a lot of those, self-development conferences and, you know, to see a lot of people got into Robert Kiyosaki, “Rich dad, Poor dad” understanding a lot of those kind of motivational financial, you know, books as well.
And I found that really good. And that’s how I kind of stumbled into trading. It’s how did you find when you got into trading, how did you find back then when it wasn’t known particularly well, how did you find people treated you?
How Rimantas discovered trading.
Did they think you were a little bit a bit odd or a bit lazy or something for doing it?
The there’s a funny story of how I discovered trading in the first place. So I was on a 9 to 5 job back then. I remember it was 2007, 2008, sometime around that. And, I was just browsing online looking for ways for additional income. You know, I remember I found this, this software website or whatever, and I can’t remember the name exactly, but it was something called, like Forex Killer or something of that kind.
You know, there’s a lot of fact turbos and those type of things back then. Yeah. And it looked like, you know, all very suspicious and stuff, but I don’t know why, but it caught my attention because, like, I back then, I was like, I don’t know what forex is, but but whatever this is, this is, it’s it’s killing it.
You know, it’s like you can win like cheats, hacks and stuff like that, you know? And this got my attention. So I got him to start getting to know more and more about it. And I thought, okay, like, it seems I’m going to be a millionaire by next month. You know, that’s why I’m going to do that. Yeah.
So obviously as soon I realized that’s not going to happen that fast. It’s not as simple as it is. You know, especially with that scale or whatever software back in the days. But but this is what got me into, you know, and, I’m a programmer. I’ve been a programmer since I was 12. Yes. I’ve always loved computers, you know, write code and stuff and tell computer what it should be doing.
So it’s easier for me or whatever. So, I was very fast to create some indicators, trading bots for MetaTrader 4 back in the day. And and that’s where it all started, you know. So so eventually it’s not that I become a trader, you know, at that time, but I became a software developer for traders. I just started creating apps for others.
Like I went on the forums, read what people are looking for, I just message them, you know, and they who can create this and that app. And I’m like, yeah, I can do it. And then I remember my first $200 that I’ve earned, like this guy from US, send me 200 bucks to create an indicator. And back at the day, 200 bucks was like, have to multiply by two, two and a half to convert to Lithuanian currency that we had at the time that we have euro.
But back in the time we had let us. So that is pretty a lot of money, you know, and, and I’m like, okay, if I do this like five, six times a month, I’m pretty much making my, my salary, you know. Yeah. So I started starting doing more of that, just coding for others in the evenings. And soon after a few months, I started replacing my 9 to 5.
It kind of kind of on my job, I would be working on the indicate, you know. Yeah. So nice. And soon, like after a year or two, I started making 2 or 3 times my salary from creating software because traders need that stuff, you know. Yeah. So, I wanted to leave my 9 to 5 job, so my boss kind of knew about it, and he invited me in for for a talk and he said, listen, so you other guy who we can find somebody to replace that fast, you know.
Right. I was, I was working at the local internet service provider company, right in one of the small towns. And I was looking after 12 servers like Linux, Unix stuff, you know, all that text things. And in that, in that small town, there were not many people can do that, you know. So it took him probably couple of years to actually find somebody to replace me.
So he just said to me like, okay, you go do your own stuff, whatever you need. We’re just leave the same, you know, same salary, same everything. You just do remote work, whatever we need. And I just did that. I worked remotely for them. Yes. So I just, you know, still collecting my salary. There was not much work I had to do for them.
At the time, I just started my own business, sort of, you know, when it was more like freelancing. But later, after a few years, sometimes around 2014, 15, when I, when I went to my first, seminar to us, it was Brendan Burchard. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, he’s he’s fascinating, all that stuff. Cool. So he, you know, I wrote my first book after that seminar, I remember, you know, self-published on Amazon.
And it got to number four in the forex category. So, so all that stuff like it was really exciting times I remember. So I started my, my kind of, selling tools. On a subscription basis basically. And I was a software. So all my life I was first a software developer basically. That’s my business. You know, I know I always was very transparent about it, you know.
Yeah. Because I come from a background of a programmer and that’s great that all the tools of over the years I’ve learned like what traders want, what they need, you know, and that’s that’s where it went. So over the years I had my success and failures in trading. You know, I would occasionally I would go in and out and all that, you know.
But lately all this problem thing going on, I just saw like a really great opportunity. It’s like previously with not much capital, you couldn’t do much. You know, it’s it’s like if you have your like five, ten grand, there is not much you can, you can do in trading. Basically. That’s how I saw it, you know. Yeah. Now when you can get funded to these really bigger accounts, that’s where I’m after, you know.
So I started to be more serious about trading, started build my software around what’s, what’s I need the most. You know, it’s like I flipped the switch basically previously. Yeah. Create whatever traders are asking, whatever they need, you know, but now is like, okay, I think this thing will get me ahead. You know, I think that new feature will give me edge, you know?
So I started doing that. And there are a lot of traders that just follow with me, you know, with, with the software, with this new features and all that thing. So awesome. I believe, like, you know, that there is this saying, like all, all roads lead to Rome, you know. Yes. So that is like, there are there are a lot of ways to do the same thing and everybody of us find around.
So I feel like I find my own way of doing that stuff. Yeah. Just the way you have your own and other people write their own. So though.
Andrew’s style of trading.
Because I imagine the way we trade is probably quite different. Yeah, I, I do know that and Yeah, I would love to hear more about your style actually. Yeah. Okay.
Definitely. So, what I found is that when I started trading, which is now about 22 years ago, roughly, I also did a, like I did a course, I went up to Auckland, I did a course I spent quite a bit of money went up there, went on look back at it a few years later, the course was terrible, but I can’t I can’t knock it though, because it got me into trading a little bit like that robot was terrible, but got you into trading and it got me into the idea, so I can never really knock it, although, you know, it wasn’t great.
And I then started buying signals from people, and I then started like, you bought the robots and, MetaTrader, I think it was MetaTrader 3 even back then, and then four and then trading View and all these different platforms. And I really got into that. I always struggled with making it work in real time. I really did struggle.
And after a while I kind of thought, and this took four years, of developing my own ideas and it not work. And I suddenly thought, you know what? You’ve got to you got to make this work. And and I’m quite, I suppose, focused and determined on something. I think I can do. Despite everybody else telling you, you need to get a real job and it’s not working, and you need to, you know, start thinking seriously about going to work.
Yeah. And that’s. Which is why I asked you that question. Because I got that quite a lot from people. And, you know, back in the day, the internet was, you know, dial up. And then one gig was like a huge monthly plan, you know? Oh, yeah, things obviously vastly different today. So I ended up stripping everything off my charts, like, everything.
And I went back to thinking, actually, let’s look at the right hand side and looked at the price, because I figured out that all these lines and dots and arrows and bits all over my chart, I was actually not focused on what the price was doing. And then I started to learn about candles, and not so much a group of patterns, but individual candles and what they meant and then is like, oh, but this one, looks the same as this one.
One works and one doesn’t. Why is that? And so I was realizing, like round numbers, which I use like 00 levels and 50 levels, like you’re buying into round number and it drops, whereas the next one clears a round number two carries on. So that’s where the price came into things. And then I started understanding Fibonacci levels and retracements and extensions.
And I suppose I then built my own, system that, through trial and error of what I’ve learned, had learned up to then, kind of started to work for me, and I found it was consistently working. And the other thing that you remember back then, everybody was talking about their success or failure in terms of pips, and everybody always taught pips, and I could never, for the life of me, understand why a pip was important.
Because, you know, back then, like, US non-farm payrolls, as it was called back then, you know, the monthly employment news, it would move like, you know, three, four, 500 pips in like two seconds. Yeah. And I thought, hang on a minute, but you’re making like 500 pips then. And on a really good trade, you might be making 20, 30 pips.
It has no relevance. So I started to try and look at money management and really understand working for working at a percentage risk and a percentage game. And that was a big breakthrough as well to try and understand that. So anyway, you know, put all that together and I developed something that I could really see and understand.
I then started to enter some competitions back in the early days of subscriptions, and I think it was called FX Auto from memory. About 2006 or 2007 or something like that. Anyway, I ended up, winning this competition, and that’s where it kind of all snowballed from there. And people wrote to me and go, like, I want to subscribe to your signals.
And then other people said, look, I love what you’re doing, but rather than buying this, I want you to teach me how you do it. And so I got a guy over in Australia, in Noosa in Australia who’s still a client to this day. Back in around 2008 nine. And, he said, I’ll pay you to fly to Australia for a week and teach me, come and spend a week with my family and teach me how to do it.
And so I rapidly put this course together, took it down to the local printers, got it printed and laminated in color and made it look nice in the folder, and flew over there and taught him. And, that’s kind of how it all started, completely by accident. And I thought, this is quite cool. People are paying you to teach.
But more importantly, what I got out of it is it started to build a community of people. And and as you would know, and anybody watching or listening to this would know, one of the hottest things in trading, I think, is it’s quite a lonely business, you know, it’s full of, a lot of like scams and dodgy people.
But also, I think from a trader’s point of view, it’s potentially quite lonely. And so I really enjoyed, getting to know people in person. And then I got asked by a broker to do some training up in Auckland and not go to Auckland here in New Zealand and teach people and it kind of then sort of built ten people and then became 100 people and then, you know, 500 people.
And it became really kind of personal to build that community of people were all trading the same idea and helping each other. And I think that’s kind of, an undervalued part of trading as an, as an educator. I think that’s something that’s really important for people to get to be able to talk and communicate. I’ve. So that was, that was my kind of story and background.
That’s quite. I’m sorry. In story. Andrew. Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s and it sounds really familiar for me. It is. Yeah. I think we have remarkably similar backgrounds and slightly different stories, but similar kind of how it worked.
Breakthroughs for Rimantas.
What would you say was like a secret or a breakthrough for you with either your trading or your programing? That kind of made you go from sort of okay as a trader to like, yeah, I’ve got this.
It would be difficult to, to pick one thing probably, you know, I would, I would say probably a few things. That got me, you know, to that breakthrough. Right. One of them, one of them was definitely the, the thing you were talking about. Pips and percentages. Yeah. You know, it’s, and to me, there is even more like, as a programmer, I had to do pips some points.
Yes. You know, I remember, like, back in the days, there was, there was like a four digit number for the EUR/USD and two digit number for the, for European Pairs. Yeah. And then they added an extra number at the end. And then, you know, all those pips became like, you know, fractional, like you can do, like 5.6 pips, you know, so, so for software developers, I remember there were a lot of people coming in sending me there, all the indicators and EAs and that like convert them to be compatible with that new digit style.
But yes, that was a lot of work as I was doing so, so all this confusing part and, and as fun as it is, like on the this year, I’m kind of converted to my software from not using pips, but just using points because it’s just easier to people. And a lot of people, especially newcomers, into trading.
They don’t even understand why there’s like Pip and points and like what was happening there, you know. Yes. So yeah, so when I started looking at that stuff, percentages. That was one of the things, another thing that got me as well was looking into the stop loss size, not as a, as in pips, not to have it as fixed size, but to use something dynamic, you know, so usually traders use like, oh previous vainglorious swing high something like that.
So we either use that or we use ATR indicator. Yeah. So, and the multiplier of that, this kind of works, you know, quite well, and lately I started looking at like to try the parabolic SDR. Yes. Because it’s this nicely below or in the above, it kind of it’s kind of the same as swing lower swing guy basically, you know.
Yes. So yeah, that was the thing. And and I would say the, the biggest one for me was all the backtesting and just going by, you know, from, from data driven perspective. Right. On the trading. So the way I look at it, pretty much every trading strategy, if it’s not like very discretionary, you know, so it can be coded into an algorithm that can go in history and test to see how it would have performed in the past.
Right. And while there are a lot of people who, you know, say a lot of things about how back test is nonsense and whatever, I always go back to saying, like, listen, so many great traders for decades, probably even centuries have been using paper trading. They just call it paper trade, you know? So they would just like print the charts and they would like, go on paper and look like, you know, what we can do to make this and that.
So it’s just literally what we’re doing, like backtesting. So that’s the core of my software. But but the thing I learned, it’s like if you go in YouTube, there are so many videos, oh, watch me back. Does this strategy 100 times and it’s like 95% win rate. Whatever. When you look, look at the videos, somehow there is now no 9 to 5.
It was just a clickbait. But you see how that guy’s doing backtest manually. He just goes on on trading view and draws, you know, entries and stuff. And I’m like, what the hell are you doing? You know, just go that stuff. Yeah. So so the way I tried, you know, I started doing like, I would take a very simple idea, like a pin bar or a bullish bearish engulfing.
Like we had a lot of candlesticks, like we have probably like 12 plus different candlestick strategies inside the software, you know. Yeah. So we’d take we would take that and move back test back to like 50 or 100 trades to have some statistical significance. And then we will look okay. So if we use like pin bar so we buy and sell and we use this size of stop loss and you know 2 or 3 times take profit based on ATR for example, how would it look like?
Yes. This tells you like instantly it draws everything on the chart so you don’t have to draw it. It shows like very transparent, like every trade it found. And it tells you the stats. And if and if it shows negative, obviously you would not want to trade that strategy, you know. So then you play around and change the numbers, play you know, stop size and things like that.
And once you and once I got to the stage where I say, okay, this is nonsense, like you cannot sit there and just play changing the numbers because there are so many variations, like, it’s just not possible. You know, even though if I would do that, then it would take me ages. Yes. And I can do it fast.
Now just input numbers, click and I instantly get the answer. But it’s still there are so much to try. So then I made the software to do what I call optimization right? Or or now I just started calling strategies canning or discovery basically because that’s what it is actually. So it would scan like 5, 6, 8000 variations with different stops and and different sizes for the volume pin bar, you know, all that stuff and it’s will after after scanning 8000 variations, we say, look, this is the best one in terms of return or return to drawdown ratio or, you know, things like that.
And then you can get the CSV file, which is like a big one with a thousand variations, but you can easily filter all things out and, and you see a, you know, a dozen of strategies that look with awesome numbers, then you can go and implement that, you know, so you’re kind of trading now, something that worked recently for the past six months, for example.
Yeah. So you know that this is bingo. And like we can we can’t know if this will sustain and go on like this in the future. This definitely doesn’t it doesn’t guarantee it. But at least we’re doing something that’s just worked recently. You know, not ten years ago, not five years ago, but but like recently, right now, over the recent months, you know, so I think that’s important.
I always use this analogy that that sounds kind of really cool. It’s like when you go to buy a used car, you know, you want to ask questions, you want to look under the hood. You know, it’s like you want to see the car maintenance history, which is like backtest, you know, all those things. So you go, you don’t go and buy just like blindly, you know?
So that’s pretty much what we’re doing with the strategies. And we always monitor and closely look at the metrics. And if certain metrics change in a certain way, we just stop the strategy. And then we either we optimize it or we just go with another one because right. Like I understand that a lot of these strategies are just short lived.
You know, give it a few weeks, a few months and then just stop working basically. Right, for that period of time, as I see it, like Mark has shifted, things change. So that strategy might be a wonderful again in a few months time, maybe later, but not right now. So just pause it and go with another one. Yeah.
So I realize that’s that’s quite a, a different trading style from a lot of people that I see around, you know, especially with those who are using discretionary trading because in my world, everything is like systematic trading, like you can put everything into the algorithm, you know.
The dangers of algorithm trading.
So one of the things that I see with algorithm trading is you still have to, you know, people see it as, as an easy way out. I’m not saying you, but, you know, other people see this as, you know, AI expert advisors, whatever. It is an easy way. Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of a lot of people still understand trading in order to understand either one how to write it or if you buy one, how do you use it properly and when to use it and what to use it on.
I think people see that there were there was interesting realization even for me. I remember because you get so stuck in all that systematic things, you know, and you do realize that it’s not something you just put on the chart and it just makes you money. You know, it’s not that there will never, ever be a software available to everybody who just does that.
You know, I don’t know why people think they can pay 100 or even 5000 whatever for some. Like if, if that robot makes money for not doing anything, you know, people would not be selling it and that and probably people would be killing for it. Probably Wall Street will kill you. Take it away and you know it’s it’s a bit of conspiracy theory.
Yeah. But probably that’s that’s how the world works. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it seems to me, you know, you find the cure to cancer and you know, some things will happen for sure.
Yeah. You won’t, you won’t be telling too many people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s the thing, you know. So, so what we have is not like you put it on the chart and just make money.
You know, you always have to look after it. And and I remember this was very nice realization for myself. Last year when I was speaking with Alex Ong. I don’t know if you heard about the guy, you know, it’s like he’s my dear friend. I met him last year or so. So. And, and I remember when he introduced me and my software to guest, people because he’s trading a lot of candlestick patterns as well, you know.
Right. He said, okay, listen, guys, once once you go and look for strategies, you know, with the scanner, just do it this way. You pick a direction. How you as a human kind of decide what the direction you should be looking strategies for. And I remember one example he gave me was like okay we’ll look at the dollar yen.
So for the past year or two or whatever he said I can’t remember exactly. But for the past some time it’s only longs now, you know. So just try switching it to buy only you know, and just look for a strategy that on the buy. And I’m like, okay, let me try this. And I try and and the results on the backtest was like 4 to 5 times better than, you know, looking both directions.
Yes. And I’m like, oh sure. That’s that’s how you have to, you know. So since then I started looking for ways to, to make this more systematic thing. But but you can never but you can never, you know, take out what’s in human brain. That’s I can’t tell you the thing isn’t a thing. So if you don’t see, it’s always it’s always you as a trader that has to make these decisions.
You know, what are you what strategies you’re looking for and what where why this bear right now? Why not call? Why Nasdaq now? You know, it’s like. And when you do that you also have to realize we also have obviously like the automation stuff. You know all these strategies that I create. We have the automation module and then just trading then I don’t have to be there, but I have to be there to look, you know, after them.
So if they’re making, let’s say, three, five trades a week, a strategy. Yes. So obviously for me it’s enough like, you know, half an hour a day or even 15 sometimes just glance at the charts, see all the numbers, find we have one trade running. Okay. And you just leave it like 30s basically, you know, it’s next day, you come back and you look again.
You see, okay. We had like two stops. Numbers is not looking quite good. You know, I have to put some work to find maybe new strategy. Yeah. If all things go well, it’s making money, you know, taking trades and it’s going in your favor. You just do nothing. You just just look, you know, and and go live your life and leave it.
Yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s always the trader has has to do some of these decisions. Yes. There is a really nice analogy there that I always tell about about bots, not just trading bots. Anybody like a lot of people can relate to having a vacuum cleaner robot at home, you know. Yeah, yeah. It’s like pretty wide, world wide.
Like, people know what it is. You know, you just have this vacuum cleaner, you go to work, you come back, you know, your floor is clean. Yeah, but if you have a dog or a cat and if it makes a little doo doo on the floor, the robots will spread it out everywhere, you know? So I always say, like, robots are stupid.
Yeah. All of this, you know. Yes. With AI. Yeah. Yes. They getting more advanced and more smart and a lot of lot. You know, all that stuff, but in a lot of areas. And I still believe that trading is one of them. Yeah. It’s just it’s just guessing and if it’s and if it’s guessing based on some backtest and history data, and you know, the numbers and the win rate and stuff like that, if it can do that, I would say, okay, it’s smart to some degree now, you know, because that’s what we’re doing as humans and looking at these numbers and, and making decisions, you know.
So as AI can write and create videos now and, and images, you know, it’s pretty much advanced. Yes. Trading like you just you just guessed and you either guess on on data or you just guess blindly. So a lot of of what we see online now, oh, this trading bar just made me rich. La la la. You know, whatever they’re selling, they just want your commissions, you know?
Yeah. For trades you will make and those will be pretty much random. That’s that’s pretty much what’s going on.
Controlling your emotions.
Do you find this and this might lead nicely into what we do outside of trading. I find that the knowledge up here because I say to people, there’s two things you need to control and trading once you head and once you heart.
Because trading is emotion. It you know, it’s emotion. You can’t ever get away from that. Even if it’s a prop firm and it’s not your money, it’s still emotion. So, do you find, though, that having that knowledge of trading up here, regardless of whether you use bots or manual trade, it’s so crucial that you have that ability to look at a chart or look at a robot and understand what’s happening as a trader, because otherwise, and I have this discussion with somebody I know who’s a fund manager, not anything to do with trading, you know, not forex, shared funds and retirements and pensions and things.
And and I say to them, that’s great, I could hand you all this money, go do what you want with it. But I don’t actually get anything out of that up here. I don’t have any knowledge. I have nothing to share or to handle the kids, or I don’t feel good about it because what I love about trading is having that ability to look at a chart and make a decision, whether it’s right or wrong in hindsight.
And, you know, in the end, I mean, is we have no hindsight, you know, in real time, make a decision. And if I get that right and I get that trade exactly what I look for it to do based on all these reasons, ABC, that’s a massive like thing for me. That feels really good to have that knowledge and information.
I always say that mindset is one of the first things that people have to master. Yes. When you go into trading, yes. And it’s even if you go trading with with bots, you know, it’s like it doesn’t matter if it’s automated bad. No, it doesn’t matter. Like when you go to trading, I think mindset it comes first like you have to have a strong mindset that actually I’m writing a book on this now I can finish where editing it now.
And you know, so I I’m really looking forward to release it this summer. I’ll let me know when it’s finished. Of course, of course. So I saw that a lot of people come in, they try 1 or 2 things and, you know, for a few days, for a few weeks. And they just quit. And then they call it B.S. and, you know, I’m like, no, it’s not like if you go to the gym three times and you didn’t loss weight (where’s your outcome?), you know, even you would be laughing at yourself.
Yeah. It’s like because you are expecting to lose weight from three times you come to, you know, then people would go, start playing basketball like, oh, I want to go into basketball. And after three matches, three times you tried playing basketball. If you couldn’t do it or you played poorly, you know, it’s your first three times, you wouldn’t say, oh, basketball is not for me.
It’s like, this is B.S. like basketball is a scam. You know? Yeah. Yes. And there was there was an interesting story. I remember I was lying in Miami Beach last year and, I had my day off, and I’m looking at this guy. He was like, probably in his 60s or 70. You know, you just came in probably some looked like rich guy in his retirement, you know, and he took this, he did like a kitesurfing, you know, where you’re surfing the kite.
And it was kind of this the, the, the new one, not the kite on the long string, but you have your kite and in your arms, you know. Yes, yes. He tried, he tried that for like, I don’t know, half an hour. He didn’t catch any waves or anything like it was. He was struggling like you can clearly see it’s he was in early stages trying to, you know, to learn it.
And so he did his practice for like half an hour or so. Probably got tired, you know, pack his bag and then just left. You know, I’m like looking at this and and thinking, okay, so he came here like he didn’t catch any waves. No fun. You know my problem if somebody saw other people might be even laughing at you.
But I’m like, you can’t laugh at him. Like he’s trying to learn something, you know? And he definitely realizes that you will need a lot of hours until he can do this, you know, really well, like catch the waves and stuff. So why the hell when people come in trading, they expect after a week or so, or a few videos or just one course, no matter how good it is, you know, it’s like just become professional and start making a lot of money.
Yeah. You know, nobody expects that in any other field. Yes. And I always use a sports as an example because everybody can relate to that. You know, it’s like you cannot expect to become a professional basketball player in a month. Yes. You know, it just doesn’t happen. You can get the basics and all that stuff, but then you need a lot of practice and practice and practice, you know, and always say even I’m a student right now and I’m always learning New Scotland.
Absolutely don’t always like, yeah, you have to do that all the time. And you, you will never be perfect because whenever you feel like, oh, I’m perfect with whatever, Mark has changed now and you have to learn now new stuff, you know. Right. Slow. But once you in the bum. Yeah. There was no Trump before with his crazy terrorists, you know, and his like there’s always something new going on that.
And that’s what’s good about the market isn’t it. It’s changing. We have to change with it. And add things remove things. Yeah. And a lot of that comes from mindset. You. So always before you start trading any strategy just ask yourself. So and it’s very easy when you look at the backtest you know. So if you see a backtest shows you that you know, back in time in the last six months, we see that there were five consecutive losses in a row, strategy like producing really nice numbers.
But there was at some point five consecutive losses. So when five consecutive losses happens again for you. Yes. And for some strange law, it probably will happen now when you just started. Yeah. Yeah. So what are you going to do. Like how will you work with that. You know, and if you have risk too much per trade you will be in trouble.
And probably by, you know, just risk 3% on the trade and by, by loss number three, you will quit and call it B.S. you know, it doesn’t work. But yeah, but if you risk half percent or quarter of a percent by loss number five, you will say, okay, five is normal for this type of strategy. If we get 1 or 2 more, then I kind of invalidated and okay, I’ll get back to the drawing board.
But after that five, there is much big chance the strategy will just recover and go on, you know, so the that’s the thing and all that is in your mindset right.
And I think we would you see we earlier we touched on prop firms and we didn’t really talk too much more about it. But obviously it’s a it’s a big thing right now.
I mean, from my point of view as an educator, it’s a massive thing. And I’m sure your point of view, it is because, it helps people the, the issue I have is that people will come to me and go, look, I want to join your course. I like what you do. You’ve been around for years. Good reviews, all the rest of it.
But I can’t afford it. Or, I’ve got a life course. I can’t justify it the wife, you know, to someone like that. Yeah. And and I’ve always said, look, I fully get that, and I respect that, understand it. But I’m teaching you how to do something. Whether you’ve got $5000 or $5 million, I don’t know.
And it doesn’t really worry me. I’m still teaching you the same thing. And a prop firm is obviously opened up. That ability for someone who doesn’t, or either have funds or want to put their own into it, obviously trade significant funds. The issue, of course, is like we’ve just touched with everything going on up here, is that people see it as a quick fix, and they see it as an easy way to give up their job, which they hate, or something like that, because they see it as a way of making money without doing that homework and spending six months, 12 months on demo small, live account to trade properly first. And I see that all the time, and I’m sure that you must see that as well.
I believe this opened up a big opportunity for people, as you said. Yes, all the Prop Firms, but I do as well understand that, it’s a lot of people see it as a quick fix. Yes. You know, I just kind of confirming what you said, but at the same time, especially last year, around February, we saw a lot of firms go bankrupt, you know?
Yeah, they disappeared. Yeah, disappeared. So we started, you know, hearing the stories about this prop firm a scam, that prop firm a scam. Then then we were like, I’m in some groups on Facebook, and I see newbies trading, trading and sharing their, you know, experience with prop firms and pretty much every week, at least one post will be something like, oh, this prop firm doesn’t pay.
It’s a scam, you know? So and all that is this funny thing to me is like how all this works. You know, I was like previous low this prop firms they’ve been there for like ages. Yeah. It’s but now they starting being available to retail traders, you know like as I say like people who are in the 9 to 5 job at McDonald’s and now they can trade with a prop firm, you know, so but these people doesn’t have the right mindset to look at it.
So they will look at it that prop firm. Oh they didn’t pay me. Yeah. They didn’t pay you because you breached your drawdown limits. You know, you refused to believe that. Then you rather go online and spread nonsense and bad word about it instead of actually taking a look at it, understanding that you’ve made a mistake that you could not do and prop firms doesn’t want you as a trader, you know more.
You open ten trades of the same kind. They luckily hit the profit target just because of luck and they don’t pay you. And now you’re mad, you know, because that’s not what they’re looking for. They want to filter out good traders. Yes. And and they always give this like, like, really nice. How to say that analogy.
Yeah. Yes. Looking for that number. If you can bear with me for a second. Yeah. It’s like, Q where is it? Give me a second. World record run? So there is this, there’s this analogy that I give. So, so basically there’s a world record to run one mile. You know, I’m a runner. So that’s why it’s fascinating to me. So. So there is a guy in the world, I can’t pronounce his name. Elgar. Something. So he, he holds a world record for fastest mile.
He runs. Right, you know, and it was like three minutes, 43 seconds. So three minutes, 43 seconds to run a mile. There’s one guy in the earth who can do that. Now imagine if Prof firms would put a drawdown limit. Like look at an analogy and they would say you have to run a mile in 3:43. Yes.
How many people can actually pass this challenge and get right that the only one on the one person is what you know? Now imagine if they say, oh, you can run a mile in 30 minutes, 29, 30 minutes. You know, everybody would be, you know, yes. But can you then further sustain that running and do it? Well, yeah, of course not.
You know, if you if you can run a mile in 29 minutes like you’re like the most unfit, it’s person like you probably, you know, so so instead prop firm said okay, what if we look for people that can run a mile, let’s say in in seven minutes, you know, and it will be a challenge even for me. You know, I was like five, six, seven minutes, let’s say that range, you know, so if you can run a mile and in six minutes, there’s probably very few people in your town that can actually do that.
They can do that properly. Yeah. And consistently. Yeah. So that’s what firms are looking for. Good traders that can demonstrate consistently that they can make money. They don’t need to make huge amounts. They don’t need to double accounts. They don’t need to make consistently 10% of remind because it’s not a salary. It doesn’t work that way, you know.
So when people come to trading and how much money can I make with your software? It’s like there are so many questions now before I can answer this, how to be like, yeah, how suppose I know? Well, I don’t know, what’s your capital? I don’t, you know, there’s so many things, right. I just can answer that question. And it’s like, oh, you’re a scammer.
You don’t know. You know. Yeah. So people are very fast. Yeah. And when you give people a realistic number, a low realistic number, they tell you it’s rubbish and I can do bigger somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah. I was saying like yeah you can, you can do like half percent a month and it’s like, oh I don’t want that.
You know, I want to go somewhere else. Yeah. That’s right. You know. So that’s the thing. So the way I look at problem firms, they’re looking for really good runners. So they seek, you know, and there are only few in your town. Will you be one of them? And imagine how much time it would take you to train to actually run that mile that fast.
Yes. You know, so imagine now how much time it will take you and how much effort you have to put in to become a trader worth passing the challenge and trading with a prop firm. Right. And all these rules that they have, all these drawdown limits and everything there are here. So they could filter out all these like gamblers and, and you know, these kind of people basically because they want good runners.
Absolutely. And and I think that that’s such a great analogy. I’ve not heard the running one.
How much do you really want to be a good trader?
From a personal point of view, you know, there’s a number of things that I’ve learned over the years that I found difficult, but I wanted to do and I think wanting to do it is half the battle. And that’s the the issue I see with prop firms, people say they want to pass a prop firm, but it’s like, do you want to do that groundwork that homework and really want to do it?
As an example, I’ve been playing the guitar for the last three years. I’ve just started to learn to sing this year. I really want to do. I practiced half an hour, an hour every single day. I’ve got my guitar microphone just sat right here next to me, you know, because I want to do it properly. I get good tuition.
So, 12 years ago, I learned to fly a helicopter. You know, and same thing, obviously with that, if if you can’t, it’s one of those things that not many people can do because it’s so difficult and you have to put a huge amount of hours and it’s not just flying it, it’s all the other stuff. It’s the footwork, the law, the how your body works, the maps, the clouds, the you know, the navigation, the mechanics of it all that goes into it before you even, you know, saw the turbine or a piston engine.
There’s so much more to it. And that hundreds and hundreds of hours that go into something like that. And once you pass your license, you’re then starting to learn, and trading’s the same, isn’t it? Like we said earlier, we’re constantly learning, constantly developing and adapting. And I think I have that fear that we’re trading because online, it’s made to look so easy that most people fail to understand that this whether it’s, again, whether it’s manual trading or whether it’s automated trading, so much time and dedication and that desire to want to do it is missing from so many people.
They see a quick fix, a well, I get the email, I’ve got $500, but I want to quit my job and make $5,000 a week as I. How do you how on earth do you think that’s going to ever happen? Yeah, I know I’ve heard people when they quit the job and it’s like, what are you going to do next?
Oh, I will gonna learn this forex thing, you know. Yeah. And they call it forex thing because it’s just very new to them, you know. That’s right. It’s like it’s some work. Yeah. Yeah.
So let’s move on to lifestyles because we probably can’t close on an hour. Both of us have lifestyles that we’ve created that probably a number of years ago we didn’t have.
And trading in both of our, cases has helped. And we work around our trading. And I think we both love life and do things because we’re motivated hard workers. Let’s, everybody know, you know, about your running and your what, what’s developed in your life out of that family, etc.. Yeah. I will begin with, with saying how I admire you learning to sing and the guitar and everything.
Yeah, I love it. Thank you. I remember when I was in high school, I really dreamed about becoming a singer. And even roads songs back then probably have like ten, 10 or 12 songs written, like. Yeah, and but I never was a good singer. I tried to be, but I didn’t put enough effort into that. Yeah. And I quit it when I started, you know, working college and all that things.
I stopped it and, and always look at this as a good example of what you just set, you know, it’s like you really have to want it, you know, probably didn’t want that enough. You know, I think that’s right. Yeah. So, yeah, the lifestyle, I built something for myself that always wanted a lifestyle like this, and, and I’m still building it, you know?
Yes. So I always wanted to travel the world, and I always wanted to be the guy with a laptop who can go anywhere and just do it, do the work, you know? So that’s what I’m doing. So I’m pretty much traveling almost every month, right? It’s like last month. I just got back from Greece, you know, April, I was in Miami.
March didn’t travel anywhere. February. I was in California, Arizona, Utah. You know, like travel, travel there a bit. Very nice. So, yeah. So this month, like the Salem going to Switzerland for, for, like for five, five day, I love it, I love hiking in the mountains and stuff like that, you know? So, so that’s, that’s the lifestyle book for myself because there are so many places in the world where I would like to travel and experience it and see different cultures and, and be in different mountains, do different runs and, you know, and, and if you have just like two weeks of vacation every year, which most people,
that’s what they have, it’s pretty much very difficult to do that. And I was that guy before, you know, and I would get my two weeks off vacation and I would usually go somewhere where you want to just relax because that’s all we have like two locations to relax. You know? So basically now I’m building it this way that I could work in travel.
And my trading and myself, the business allows me to do that. So that’s, that’s really nice. Apart from that I see myself just pretty much doing sports running. I really love hiking and doing hiking outside of the country is the best, best hikes you can find. You know, Europe and pretty much everywhere where you see the mountains.
Have you been to New Zealand? No, I haven’t, I have gone and I and I still see it in the window. Yeah, I can imagine. And I still remember you invitation. So I’m still here, but I’m building myself there is that I really need to, to go that far, you know. But, yeah, I, I really need to plan for it, actually.
So, you know, it’s like being in Europe. It’s it’s easy. You we have everything there, and it’s just like 2 or 3 hours away. Yes. So it’s like a no brainer to book a flight for like 5 or 7 days to go somewhere, you know, in the mountains.
Andrew’s and Rimantas lifestyle outside of trading.
Well, I’m just looking at the map behind me. I don’t know if you can see it by maybe the right way. New Zealand’s not even on that map. It’s, Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was, when we were talking earlier, I was going, I can see where you are up there, but where am I? I’m not even on their. A Trader from New Zealand. Doesn’t even show. It’s not even on there. Yeah, that’s that’s not. We have some lovely mountains and, some great outdoor ramps or as we call them here, tramping or hiking.
Yeah. So, you’d be very welcome to come over here. So what’s the hiking done for you? Like, obviously, we both love the outdoors. We’re on 11 acres here. We grow as much food as we can of our own. I’ve got my chickens. And, you know, we try to grow everything, cook our own food. From the health point of view and the enjoyment and the fitness point of view, grounding, being outside these glasses, like I said earlier, I don’t need them.
They’re not glasses. They’re for blue light for screens and things. So all those type of things, the health things. I’m a bit older than you. You know, to me become really, really important because obviously stood looking at a chart or a screen or like you in coding. We’ve got to have that balance and that blend between getting outside, getting in the day, getting green, running, flying, whatever.
It might be really important, isn’t it. Yeah it is. And when when you look at, the way I look at hiking and all my trail runs, you know, like, I love running long distances. Not that I do that very often. Yes. You know, but I would try to escape at least once a year somewhere where I can do one of my crazy runs.
What? I would say something like 50km and more, you know, aggressive when you, when you, when you run in one go. And we, we’ve done some pretty, interesting runs with, with my, with my friend. You know how one crazy friend that can run for, like, his record is 100 miles in one go? You know, he’s that crazy.
Yeah. What would roughly with that take to do? Like length of time? Roughly how long would that be? I think it took him like 20, 26 hours maybe. I can’t remember exactly. But journeys. Yeah. Yeah. And and they did that in a they did that in Finland during the time where there’s always a day. Yeah I know you know that.
Yeah. So they did that. I think they slept for like half an hour maybe or something. Yeah. It was nuts like you said. Like never ever. But you know, if you wanted to try hit summit, take it off the list. Yeah. So I’m not crazy like him yet, but. But I will always find myself challenging for, you know, for these things.
So the the craziest run we did with him was that we run across Lithuania from top to bottom. That was 500km. And we did that in nine days. So that was pretty much like there were days like 50 to 70km we would be running, you know, pretty much all day. You run and you get some rest, you run again.
And this. That’s why me that’s why I a helicopter, I just fly. But all this like, imagine again like. Yeah, you need, like, strong legs and, you know, all the endurance and know that you also need this. Yeah yeah yeah mindset. That’s like because a lot of times the mind will tell you stop now it’s enough. Yes. But actually it’s just, you know, you just lying to you.
You can go way further than that. Yeah. That, you know and and I believe that’s an important part for me, building that mindset to be stronger and stronger because we need a strong mindset in trading as well. Right. And in life in general, you know, so obviously there are many ways to improve your mindset and but that’s one way of how I’m doing it.
You know, it’s I did karate for about ten years or ten, maybe a bit more, and put all my kids through it and some of the great things that you do when you’re absolutely, completely shattered the grading to get your belt, when you start getting into the high grades and when you’re in a sensei teacher level, they know you can do it.
They know you’re good enough, otherwise they wouldn’t put you through for the grading. What they want to see is how much. And you go through that pain. How much do you really, really want it? Rather than going, oh, I’m giving up this too hot. You know, and like you said, if you’re doing these, you know, tournaments or, you know, better exercises, whatever it might be, and they go just stick out a stick and you take your head and your mind off somewhere else, and then all of a sudden you’ve done another hundred of them or push up.
So whatever it might be that you thought 100 ago, I was completely dead. And I can’t do this, so you can do it. Like you said, it’s up here. How much do you want to get through that thing? Take yourself somewhere else in the mind
And assist them in trading. Like whatever. You get stuck because you just lost, you know, I don’t know, five, seven trades in a row or whatever.
Just just think about it like this mindset thing. If you have strong mindset enough you will not quit it. You know it’s okay to pause. It’s okay to call it a failure today. You can get back tomorrow or the day after, you know, and look at it with fresh new look and just don’t get too emotional, you know.
So you need a strong mindset in that because there will be bad days, bad months. And you know, so that’s the thing. If somebody buys a car, they would probably never expect to not have a scratch on the car that somebody will bump with the doors, or even they get into small accidents somewhere and scratch your car or whatever.
Like it would be silly to not expect it, you know, because it just happens every day. So if you go into trading and you expect to to never have a losing week or losing month, you know, that’s just like it doesn’t sound right. Yeah. So there will be this thing. So you have to you have to build your mindset the right way to, to be able to live through that basically.
Yeah. Not quite too soon. Absolutely. That’s fascinating.
Controlling your risk as a trader.
And and like this I think from a practical point of view and summarizing that one of the things I always stress, especially when people are on prop firms, is make sure your risk is very, very low per trade. I think that’s huge because like you said, you can have several trades all getting stopped out in a row it’s not going to wipe you out.
It also means that if you have trades that are high reward to risk within a couple of trades, you back to break even, then back into positive territory. And it’s having that confidence in that strategy and that system and getting that money management right that will become key that I believe, to a trading a trader’s success. It’s like the whole thing that we’re talking about, whether it’s running or karate or whatever it is, they all blend in.
They’re all the same, aren’t they? Trading another one of those things? Imagine if you if you try to run a mile and break a record, you know, even your personal record. Let’s say this like, I don’t know, let’s say five, seven, seven minutes out and you’re trying to break a personal record. So imagine how many times you’ll have to do it and actually train hard to to break your personal record.
Yes. Every time you try it and you fail, just think of it like, a lost trade, you know? Yeah, we just lost the trade. You just lost it, you know? And you might try ten times. You might try 15 times, but eventually will break it, you know, no personal record. And then when you look at it this way, you realize if you if you risk small enough on every trade that it allows you to survive, I don’t know, it’s like 20 trades like, yes.
In a row. Yeah. You’re still in the game. You know, from that kind of perspective. When you look at it, it doesn’t hurt you emotionally too much. If you if you hit a stop loss again and again. If I always say like if, if you just hit a stop loss and it hurts you emotionally or even physically, you know, so it means you were risking too much on that trade.
Otherwise it wouldn’t like doesn’t matter like I yeah, I was given an example the other day and it says like, okay, so you want to get in the proper trading, just go and buy an account 90 bucks like FDM or whatever. Like $90. Yeah. The small is like ten, ten K and people would be like, oh, I’m not very I don’t know this.
I don’t know that. I’m like, yeah, that’s that’s like people imagine when they start running. They don’t know nothing about running other than like there were running ideas. There were kids, you know, so you know how to place trades. You click buy and sell. Yeah. And I’m like, yeah. So that’s pretty much the same as as a kid knowing how to run you just you just run, you know.
So if you want to start running and training for a marathon now so what do you do? Like you just buy your running shoes for longer distances and you go running. Maybe you will run two kilometers, maybe five, I don’t know, but you just start and you run and then you will fail to run a marathon for probably a thousand times until we actually can do it.
Because the first run will be 1 or 2km. You will suck, it will be slow, you know? But that’s the thing. So you buy your first challenge account and you go try and and it will be very not perfect. You will blow it, you will make mistakes, you will look, but you will get yourself in the game and you will start trading, you know, go to non.
Yeah. But then you apply that one knowledge to risk very small amount and you can start playing with something like $25 a trade. Yes. So you just so you basically in like in reality you, you’re risking your line to box in reality that you actually paid for the, you know, and inside the prop account you are risking 25, which is not actually even real money, you know.
So how can this hurt you? Yeah. So if you are failing, trade off the trade and this hurts you because you are failing, not because of the amount it means you are getting too emotional. You need a stronger mindset, you know, so you have to do something about it now. So you have to improve and look at this.
And but that’s what gets you stubborn and go out there and look for solutions and improve yourself and learn more and more. So I believe that’s probably one of the best ways to get into the field, isn’t it? Absolutely. You just you just start knowing that you are not perfect and knowing that the first few tries will not be good, you know?
Right. But but as a you start you accumulating knowledge. Yes.
Summary and contacting Rimantas https://www.mt4copier.com/
Hey Rimantas. I think we should probably call it a day that we’ve been going for. We said maybe half an hour. I think we’re probably about an hour and 15 or 20. We could talk for hours, I have heard. How can people find you? How can people contact you?
Obviously I can put a link here somewhere as well, but what’s the best way for people to get hold of you? I we have multiple websites, but probably the two most popular. That’s the, fxmagnetic.com. Yes. Or MT4copier.com Yes. That’s awesome. Thank you.
Hey look, Anything you want to add or. We’ve we’ve covered a fair bit, obviously.
I would say like we’ve probably covered we’ve covered a lot. Yeah. We could go for another hour and a half and do another one one day. And, I just want it’s an absolute pleasure to, to finally get, you know, face to face with you. We need to do it in person one day. I really, really enjoy that.
And, thank you so much for your time today fascinating insights into your thoughts and mindset and everything that you do. Congratulations on everything that you’ve achieved in the industry.
Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Andrew, Thanks for having me there, for thanks for the invitation and for everything you do for traders as well.
Awesome. Take care. Have a great day over there.
Episode Title: #592: Two Traders Talk Prop Firm Trading, Mindset and Lifestyle
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